Sigh. The Harvey Awards.
Well there was no Nascar Heroes nominated multiple times, but when an issue of ZORRO is nominated for best story and Jaime Hernandez’s “The Love Bunglers” isn’t…well, you lose some faith in your fellow humans.
Of course, after reading a selection of proud and happy tweets from nominees, it’s hard to play grinch and say, “Oh man, that was out of line.” My direct lines were filled with alarm over the number of nominations for Abrams—22 in all. Again, it’s hard to play scolding Scalia here, as most of the books nominated were very good. And as we’ve noted in the past, if Abrams distributes ballots to employees and they vote in a like-minded club…well, what is to stop anyone from doing the same thing.
Jason Shiga alone had four nominations for EMPIRE STATE: A LOVE STORY. Jason Shiga is definitely on the short list of great cartoonists (Bookhunter!!! Meanwhile!!!), but a nomination as inker doesn’t strike us as much of a encomium for his work, like a similar nomination for Jeff Kinney a few years back. Both Kinney and Shiga draw stick figures—inking isn’t really much of a craft for them.
At the same time, anyone who complains about the Harvey nominations without having VOTED FOR THEM needs to take a time out. Or else we can, just as we usually do, throw up our hands and mutter.
So what to do? Well let’s just be happy for the deserved nominations, like Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin for their Daredevil covers, or Kinney, Kate Beaton and Evan Dorkin in the humor category, nominations for Big Questions, The Death Ray, Oji Suzuki, Shigeru Mizuki, Sara Pichelli, Kevin Huizenga, Craig Thompson, Laura Lee Gulledge and really, lots more. There are a lot of very good comics coming out, and if the Harvey list doesn’t really seem to reflect ALL of the best in 2012 comics, it does recognize lots of very good comics.
You know what we really need? That roundup of “best of” lists by Sandy Bilus. Let’s all nag him.
I remember the year at CrossGen when Chris Oarr made sure anyone who wanted a Harvey Awards ballot got one. This was a place with A-List talent: Jim Cheung, Steve Epting, Greg Land, Brandon Peterson, Steve MacNiven, colorists Laura Martin & Justin Ponsor just to name a few. Surprise: several CrossGen books ended up nominated. After all, we were genuinely proud of some of the books we put out.
Suddenly there was an outcry that we had somehow stuffed the ballot, or that we were told by CrossGen’s crazed publisher Mark Alessi what to vote for. All we did was care enough to participate. No good deed goes unpunished, right?
From that moment, the Harveys, which had always seemed so classy, lost all credibility in my eyes. I haven’t cared one bit about them since. And from this article, it looks like nothing’s changed.
One year as a publisher I sent in a bunch of nominations via fed-ex so they would make it by the deadline. When none of my books showed up on the list, I asked why. Turned out our nominations had made it in time, but we were told they didn’t open the box until after the deadline so they weren’t counted. Haven’t paid much attention to the Harveys since then.
Every year, it never changes. The dang Harvey’s are a dang joke.
Have you read the Zorro story or are you judging a book by the cover? And complaining because your favorite didn’t get nominated.
The Hernandez Brothers have reached the point in the field where they are simultaneously taken for granted by the Old Guard readers and largely ignored by the New Upstart readers. Whether the latter is simply because Los Bros’s ouvre is intimidatingly large and hard to tackle, I can’t say, but it’s sad none the less.
I guess I’m the only one who thought that “Empire State” sucked, right?
Glad “Infinite Kung Fu” got nominated for best Original GN. Crime that it didn’t get nominated at the Eisners.
Jaime Hernandez doesn’t deserve awards for Love Bunglers. He deserves parades.
“…when an issue of ZORRO is nominated for best story and Jaime Hernandez’s “The Love Bunglers” isn’t…well, you lose some faith in your fellow humans.”
We get ONE single nomination and have to be singled out as your ‘for example’ with what’s wrong with the rewards… BOO.
Joe, you know I love my friends ay Dynamite and I’m sure that this is a fine example of the adventure genre. It hasn’t received the acclaim of “The Love Bunglers” however. It is an easy book to pick on, but I am definitely open to crow eating.
so, awards are an extension solely of acclaim? can they not be a form of sole acclaim in and of themselves? matt’s current run on Zorro has been well-received and we’ve received noms for the work itself, i think mainly because people know matt’s a solid, go-to “adventure comics” creator. that’s a plus for us, to be sure.
I just think it’s a terrible mistake to run down one genre in favor of another and a dividing line I’ve never understood.
So the big unasked (and unanswered) question for this and the Eisners seems to be, Why wasn’t L&R’s The Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez nominated?
Any thoughts/opinions?
@Joe: I’m picking up Zorro Rides Again #1 to see just what constitutes a story worthy of a Harvey nomination.